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It's repeat defeat for Ohio State in championship
Published on Tuesday, Jan 08, 2008
NEW ORLEANS: Any time there's a premier sporting event, millions of fans want to know everything about everything.
And so at the BCS National Championship Game on Monday night at the Louisiana Superdome, some people were excited to learn that Ohio State coach Jim Tressel wore his gray sweater vest and discreetly sewn Buckeyes logo on the left breast. Others, maybe academic types, probably were thrilled to know that OSU President Gordon Gee was adorned in gray slacks with randomly placed red block ''O's.''
More pertinent to the competition on the field, the Buckeyes were outscored 28-0 from early in the second quarter to early in the third. Ohio State fell on its sword repeatedly, committing four personal fouls and allowing a field goal to be blocked and two passes to be intercepted.
Did these mistakes have anything to do with the Buckeyes' 38-24 loss to LSU?
What do you think? More than likely, Tiger partisans will chalk the win up to the vast superiority of the Southeastern Conference relative to the Big Ten
Truth be told, LSU surely wouldn't be national champion today without the Buckeyes' gracious philanthropy. Does that mean that Ohio State was robbed or somehow unfairly deprived of victory? Hardly.
Football is an activity that has little in common with the goals of the American Red Cross or the United Way. Teams are taught to give no quarter, let alone hang the Christmas stocking on their opponent's mantel after filling it with goodies.
''When you make mistakes and don't execute, it's hard to win football games,'' said running back Chris Wells, who was not among the guilty parties on the OSU side.
Let's not cut the Buckeyes any slack on this one. Just the other day, Tressel was telling the media how coaches and players should self-evaluate their performance, win or lose. If everyone gives his best, regrets will be brief, even in defeat. Given that standard, this OSU team will have nightmares about this game for decades.
For the record, a personal-foul penalty on Todd Denlinger and a face-mask penalty on James Laurinaitis ate up 28 yards of an 84-yard LSU touchdown march in the second quarter. In the third quarter, with Ohio State all but assured of stopping a Tiger drive — then ahead 24-10 — Austin Spitler roughed the punter on a fourth-and-23 play to give LSU a first down. On the very next play, Cameron Heyward was flagged for yet another personal foul. With the ball now on the OSU 29, LSU had no choice but to score.
But it wasn't just dumb penalties that killed the Buckeyes' season. Ryan Pretorious' 38-yard field goal in the second quarter was blocked, and Todd Boeckman threw a critical first-half interception to stop a promising drive.
Unfortunately for Ohio State — and Tressel and his coaching staff in particular — the performance of Boeckman from late in the regular season through Monday night's title game calls into question his fitness to remain the starting quarterback next fall.
Boeckman missed a few open receivers (but who doesn't occasionally?) and threw two interceptions. He held the ball too long with the defense bearing down, and that caused him to be sacked twice. Both times, he fumbled.
His final sack of the evening came on a fourth-and-7 play at the LSU 35. He failed to hang on to the ball, and LSU ended up with a short field again, scoring the clinching touchdown.
By contrast, LSU quarterback Matt Flynn was composed, even though the Buckeye defense frequently put him in harm's way.
So is Boeckman averse to managing a contest that means everything, or did he merely have two or three bad games? Nobody will know that until next season, when he likely will be the man behind center again.
The Buckeyes will have to live with two consecutive defeats in the national-title game. That is a cup half filled, half empty kind of statement. Sure, it's humiliating to lose back-to-back games against teams from the conference that most observers feel is supreme. Moreover, neither in OSU's 41-14 loss to Florida last year — when the Buckeyes were heavily favored — nor Monday night's loss was it much of a competition, and it hardly matters to most folks that the games were vastly different.
On the other hand, no other team has been in consecutive championship games lately. Would Ohio State fans prefer that the Buckeyes ended up in the Holiday Bowl?
So Tressel and his beleaguered team will spend another offseason listening to talking heads and columnists from around the nation belittle his team.
''You worry about the disappointment, because you know how hard these kids work,'' Tressel said. ''I am not so worried about the criticism. If you struggle with criticism, you ought not be at Ohio State or play the game of football.''
It was thought by many that one season of media harassment would spur the Buckeyes on to victory over LSU.
But as we all learned Monday night, being the underdog was not enough. Execution counts. And I'm not talking about all the players sticking their heads in the guillotine.
Sheldon Ocker can be reached at socker@thebeaconjournal.com.
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